Features (News)

Article - News; by Paul Lagasse - 4/7/11

How to Avoid the Taxman

Use this loophole to help a kid meet a dinosaur

When tax day cometh, Deborah Wood hopes you’ll choose to write a check for your Maryland taxes to her Chesapeake Children’s Museum rather than to Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot. True, Maryland needs your money; even now, as the General Assembly rushes to finish its work, thousands of good causes are competing for your every dime and dollar. Where your money goes, you’ll never know. At Chesapeake Children’s Museum, you’ll...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 4/7/11

Power Play

Electricity will cross over rivers and tunnel beneath the Bay — if given a foothold.

Whether it’s wind turbines in Annapolis, Western Maryland or Ocean City, or power poles and pathways in Calvert, the debate keeps coming closer. Do you want affordable, reliable and accessible power? Or do you want to protect the environment, starting with your own backyard? In the court of public opinion, Calvert County won against local electrical provider Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, SMECO, bringing down dozens of behemoth power poles. ...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/24/11

Rebuilding The Old Stein

After 100 years in New York, a storied mahogany bar finds a new home in Mayo

Prost! will make room for salute when you next click glasses at the bar at the new Old Stein. That’s because owner Mike Selinger has imported the bar of a famous Manhattan Italian eatery to keep the old in the Old Stein, which he hopes to reopen at its Mayo location in August after December 31’s fire. For over a century, the mahogany bar and bar back was the centerpiece of Carmine’s, a rustic Italian gathering spot in New York City’s South Street...

Article - News; by Dennis Doyle - 3/17/11

Is Commercial Netting Sustainable?

Sports and conservation groups challenge harvest traditions

Illegal commercial gill netting (and consequently, some arrests) continues despite all the attention net-fishing has been drawing on the water and in the news. Now the Coastal Conservation Association (ccamd.com) has asked Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin to re-evaluate both commercial gill net operations and pound net fisheries. Gill netting, currently and historically, is an easily and often abused activity, the nationwide marine resources...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/10/11

The Magician

Anne Arundel County Public Library’s
new administrator, Skip Auld,
is learning to pull dollars
out of thin air

Skip Auld will have to be a magician to pull all he wants out of Anne Arundel County Public Library’s incredible shrinking budget. Anne Arundel was a big step up for Auld, who came here in early November from running the Durham County public library system, about half the size of Anne Arundel County, in North Carolina. Auld’s big promotion came with a bigger problem. Total library funding has fallen 16 percent since 2007,...

Article - News; by Dennis Doyle - 3/3/11

A Grass Roots Petition to Ban Gill Nets

With Chesapeake Bay the striped bass nursery of the Atlantic, our actions have an impact far beyond Maryland shores

Jerome Collier of Severna Park has initiated an online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/yrrejmaj) to halt the use of gill nets. Collier says his goal is not to stop commercial fishing but to urge Maryland Department of Natural Resources to shift this rockfish allocation to a more manageable method of harvesting. Gill nets have been prone to abuse, and hence outlawed, almost everywhere they have been used commercially. One remarkable thing about this petition, other...

Article - News; by Dennis Doyle - 2/17/11

Natural Resources Police Locate More Illegal Gill...

Reward up to $22,500

Illegal gill nets continue to be hooked by Maryland Natural Resources Police, with two more on February 11 bringing the month total to eight thousand yards of illegal net and 25,000 pounds of illegally caught rockfish. The latest two 900-yard strings of illegal gill nets were anchored in Eastern Bay. Both were in the vicinity of Bloody Point Light, one about a mile south and other about two and a half miles northeast. The poaching was bold and defiant, with the nets anchored...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 2/17/11

Lowering the High Price of Electricity

Great power poles — not bills — will shrink

After a year of public flogging, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative has agreed to replace behemoth power poles with smaller, less intrusive poles along Calvert County’s winding Bowie Shop Road and Route 2/4 in Huntingtown. Smaller is relative. The poles will still be as tall — 75 feet — but a thicker steel plate will allow for the poles to taper toward the top. That, says SMECO spokesman Tom Dennison, is because “The most...

Article - News; by Dennis Doyle - 2/3/11

Pollution Alert

Once again Arnold’s Mill Creek pumping station has failed, dumping over a quarter-million gallons of raw sewage into Mill Creek. This spill is being blamed on the failure of two separate backup power sources. The station has been plagued with problems, most notably 2005’s three-million-gallon sewage spill, for which the watershed is still undergoing restoration. It’s arguable that the pumping station remains grossly inadequate to the development that has occurred in the area...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 1/20/11

2,593 Days to Justice

After losing her job as chief of U.S. Park Police, Teresa Chambers has finally won vindication — and maybe her old job, too.

She’s back. It took seven years, one month and six days. Then, against all odds, on January 11, Teresa Chambers of Dunkirk got the news she’d hoped for all along. Before the month is out, she’ll be reinstated to the job she loved and lost, U.S. Park Police Chief. Editor’s note: Chief Chambers told the early story of her one-woman fight in spring of 2005. Read it at http://bayweekly.com/oldsite/year05/issuexiii14/leadxiii14.html 2,593 Days Back in...